Musorgsky: His Life and Works (MASTER MUSICIAN)

Musorgsky: His Life and Works (MASTER MUSICIAN)

by David Brown (Author)

Synopsis

Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a no-holds-barred biography and a state-of-the-art guide to the composer's life and works, this superb volume in the Master Musicians series offers the first life-and-works study of this towering composer of nineteenth-century Russian music to appear in English for over a half century. David Brown shows how the largely untrained Modest Musorgsky emerged as a supreme musical dramatist in his first opera, Boris Godunov. Along with this impressive debut and his much-loved piano suite, Pictures at an Exhibition, Musorgsky produced some of the most startlingly novel music of the nineteenth century. He also displayed a prodigious gift for uncovering the emotional content of a text in his highly original song compositions. While illuminating Musorgsky's work, Brown paints a detailed portrait of a fitful composer who could apply himself with superhuman intensity when the inspiration was upon him, but who deteriorated into alcoholism and died tragically young.

$30.05

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 416
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 14 Oct 2010

ISBN 10: 0199735522
ISBN 13: 9780199735525

Media Reviews
This does a good job of putting those red-blooded melodies into context - from a childhood spent listening to his nurse's folk tales, to his death surrounded by unfinished potential masterpieces. * Anna Britten, Classic FM - The Magazine *
Author Bio
David Brown is Professor of Musicology Emeritus at the University of Southampton. The editor of the New Grove Russian Masters series, he is one of the leading authorities on nineteenth-century Russian music.